Artists who paint using short, visible brushstrokes to capture the feeling of a moment and how light changes, rather than creating detailed, realistic pictures.
From French 'impressionniste,' derived from 'impression' meaning a vague idea or effect. The term came from Monet's 1872 painting 'Impression, Sunrise,' which critics used mockingly, but artists embraced it as a movement name.
Impressionism was basically the art world's first viral meme of rebellion—established painters thought it was unfinished garbage, but these artists were actually responding to a new technology that threatened their relevance: photography had just made hyper-realistic painting pointless.
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